All Rise...

The Charge

Boris Karloff does horror like only he can!

The Case

Depending on who you ask, Frankenstein may have been either
the best or the worst thing ever to happen to Boris Karloff. After starring in
James Whale's horror masterpiece, he achieved instant stardom, and would be
forever linked with The Monster in the minds of audiences. His stardom came at a
price. For although the film and its subsequent sequels would make him an icon,
they also linked him inextricably to the horror genre, and pretty much ruined
him for any other type of film. After Frankenstein, the gentle,
soft-spoken Karloff would star in horror films, and precious little else.

The Man Who Changed His Mind is one of a handful of films Karloff
made in Britain directly following his second turn as The Monster in Bride of
Frankenstein. It's a minor but grandly entertaining old school, mad
scientist picture that gives the actor a chance to stretch his acting muscles in
a few interesting ways. In it, he plays the reclusive Dr. Laurience, a brilliant
brain scientist who has made a startling discovery—he's learned how to
transplant the "thought content" (i.e. thoughts, mannerisms, and
personality) of one being into the body of another, and vice versa. To help in
his experiments, he recruits a former student, Dr. Clare Wyatt (Anna Lee, How Green Was My Valley), another
brilliant scientist who shares his passion for the work, if not his lack of
ethical reasoning.

Dr. Laurience is visited by a wealthy entrepreneur, Lord Haslewood (Frank
Cellier, The 39 Steps), who makes him a
proposition: he will fund all of the doctor's experiments, if he will agree to
publish his results exclusively in Haslewood's newspapers. The promise of
unlimited resources is too much for Laurience, and he agrees. When it comes time
to share his work with the London-based scientific community, the doctor is
laughed at and ridiculed, which sends him plunging into madness, and leads him
to concoct a dastardly plan which will help him achieve immortality, a plan
which results, among other things, in murder.

The Man Who Changed His Mind is rife with delicious performances,
with a few notable standouts. Donald Calthrop, for one, is gleefully evil as
Laurience's wheelchair-bound assistant, Clayton, whose severe brain damage gives
him a disregard for morality, to disastrous effect. Frank Cellier has a bang-up
dual role, first as the pompous Lord Haslewood, and eventually taking the
personality of the aforementioned Clayton. Cellier is particularly good at
imitating Calthrop's mannerisms and wicked sense of humor, and his reaction to
his newfound ability to walk is hilariously dealt with ("an overrated
occupation," he calls it).

The film belongs to Karloff, and he appears to be right at home playing the
mad doctor. The degradation of Laurience's psyche doesn't occur until around the
halfway point of the film. Until then, Karloff plays him as a man dedicated to
his profession, even if that means pushing the ethical boundaries of science.
When Laurience finally does go off the deep end, his transformation is complete.
His ethical flexibility soon turns into murderous rage, as he decides to turn
his experiments toward human beings. Here Karloff gets to let loose, and clearly
relishes his opportunity to play on the other side of the Frankenstein scenario.
It makes one think that had he not been cast as The Monster in those earlier
pictures, he might have made a great Dr. Frankenstein instead.

At only 65 minutes in length, The Man Who Changed His Mind moves at a
clip, never becoming stodgy or boring. The production design has a wonderfully
dated look, as the scientist's laboratory is cluttered with what is obviously
fake machinery (check out those heart monitors) that gives it a wonderful
B-movie sensibility. It's a purely entertaining film that skirts the edge of
camp and occasionally dives right over.

The DVD release, distributed by Shanachie, can only be described as
adequate. Released under the "British Cinema Collection" label, the
video transfer, presented in full-frame, is surprisingly good. Very little wear
and tear is noticeable, with the occasional vertical scratch and speckles of
debris popping up here and there. The only problem with the transfer is some
blurring that appears to be the result of the conversion from PAL (Region 2) to
the NTSC (Region 1) format, a la Warner's Chaplin Collection discs. It
never distracts from one's enjoyment of the film, but it is noticeable.

The audio, I'm afraid, doesn't fare nearly as well as the video. Presented
in mono, there is obvious hissing throughout, and though the dialogue is
perfectly audible, the hissing can be awfully distracting. I wish some
restoration work had been done on the track, but for a budget release like this,
I guess I shouldn't have expected much. No subtitles are included, nor are there
extras of any kind, which is a real shame.

Despite my reservations about the technical aspects of the disc, I would
certainly recommend checking out the film, as a terrific example of low-budget
'30s horror done right. This will likely be a revelation for those who know
Boris Karloff only from his work as Frankenstein's monster.